All That's Best of Dark and Light
by labonsoirfemme
Summary: "I would ask you to marry me." "As you wish. My word is my word. We shall run away, change our names perhaps, live out our days in some small fishing village by the coast where no one will ever guess who we once were." [Canon Divergent] [Cesare x Lucrezia]
1. Chapter 1

Title from "She Walks in Beauty" by Lord Byron.

This fic has been sitting on my computer for a little while now. I decided to just embrace the lovely disjointedness of the scenes and post them as separate chapters instead of trying to make it one big one-shot. Canon divergent from 3x06. Enjoy!

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><p>"I would ask you to marry me."<p>

"As you wish. My word is my word. We shall run away, change our names perhaps, live out our days in some small fishing village by the coast where no one will ever guess who we once were."

* * *

><p>In this life, the enterprising Cardinal Constanzo disregards the words of the Borgia bastard and instead delivers the Sforza peace offering to Pope Alexander VI. Jacob's ladder had long since reincarnated itself within the walls of Rome, and he intends on climbing it.<p>

By the time word reaches Cesare in Milan of his father's illness, the bells in Rome have already tolled his death, and Pius III has taken the mantle of Christ's Vicar on Earth.

However, it is Julius II who meets him outside the gates of the city, looks down his nose at Cesare's dusty clothes and grief-stricken face, and tells him to ride on; that the murderous, illegitimate son of the Whoremonger of Rome would never again be welcome inside the gates of the Holy City.

"I would ask your permission, Holiness," Cesare grits out, "to collect my mother and her household—"

"Your mother was escorted from the city days ago," della Rovere tells him, spitting the words out. "She went south, to Naples. I'm sure you will be…_welcome_ there." Della Rovere smirks and Cesare knows that there is another gambit afoot, one more boot swinging towards the Borgias while they already lie wheezing on the ground.

He sets his heels to the side of his horse and wheels it around. "To Naples," he says to Micheletto, and they speed away from the Papal entourage without any further adieu. Rome recedes behind them, and Cesare can feel the tug of the city on his soul, calling him back to its streets, to its dark corners, to the gardens of its palaces. He allows himself to rein up at the top of a hillock and to cast one last look on the glittering dome of St. Peter's, where his family had tasted power, had rolled its spicy sweetness over their tongues and hungered for more and more. Cesare's heart clenches bitterly in his chest. He had been on the cusp of _true greatness_ in Milan and some lackwit Cardinal had ruined it all.

Micheletto's horse prances anxiously, sensing the mood of the men. "Were I an only child I would be headed back North, to Milan, to beg for a position in the French army." Cesare remarks lightly, his lips lifting into a sardonic smirk.

"You are not an only child, though, my lord," Micheletto replies, and Cesare exhales heavily through his nose.

"No," Cesare says, urging his horse forward again, "I am certainly not."

Their horses gallop south toward Naples, and Cesare matches the four beats of his horse's hooves to the only word that matters.

_Lucrezia._

_Lucrezia._

_Lucrezia._


	2. Chapter 2

The royal family does not meet them on the steps of the courtyard, as would have befitted Cesare's rank only weeks before, nor is an audience with the purported new King offered. Instead, a single servant leads Cesare to a courtyard where Vanozza, Lucrezia, and Jofré sit around a small table, pretending to play at cards as they had in the days before Rodrigo became Alexander. His mother's dark eyes and his sister's hard mouth confirm his suspicions, and he knows that their refuge in Naples will not be permanent.

Lucrezia's shoulders are tense under his hands, the gilded netting of her hairnet cool under his lips. "Sis," he murmurs, and then presses a kiss to Vanozza's temple: "Mother." Jofré is nearly a man grown now, but childhood still lingers in softness of his cheeks.

Sancia and Alfonso are nowhere in sight.

"Inside," Lucrezia tells him, throwing down a card to beat Jofré's. "Away from us _Borgias_." She spits her own name out like poison, and Cesare, not for the first time, has to stamp down the urge to run his sword clean through every person that has made Lucrezia feel like venom, not blood, runs through her veins. In times like these, it helps to remember that several of them are already in the ground.

(_Giovanni, Ferdinand, Juan._)

"Della Rovere will be investing Raphael's crown," Vanozza informs him quietly, keeping an eye on the guards circling past their group. "Messengers have been flying between here and Rome."

"More discussion than a mere blessing, then." Cesare shakes his head. "Father invested far too heavily in Naples."

"We must start thinking about what we will do now," Vanozza says, repeating her words from the night della Rovere's plan to assassinate Rodrigo nearly succeeded. "Our friends are few and far between, if any."

"Where will we go?" Jofré asks, brow creased.

Vanozza gives her youngest son a soft smile and pats his hair. "It may be Florence, it may be France. It may be some little town where nobody will know or care who we are."

Lucrezia's eyes meet Cesare's, and he has to force himself to look away and sip from Jofré's glass to sooth his dry throat.

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><p>It is a simple plan, with a bluntness that befits the magnificent fall from grace the House of Borgia has suffered. This was the welcome that della Rovere promised him, the final kick that Rome will deliver to Rodrigo's family.<p>

"Annulled," Cesare repeats, glaring at King Raphael across the table. "On what grounds?" Lucrezia sits to his right; his mother, then his brother, to his left. His hand has formed a fist on his thigh, and Lucrezia covers his hand with hers, running the pad of her thumb along his knuckles.

Raphael fixes him with a condescending smile. "Simulation of consent for Jofré and Sancia's marriage, and nonconsummation for Lucrezia and Alfonso's."

"Nonconsummation?" Cesare bites out. "Your father _insisted_ on viewing the consummation of marriage between your cousin and my sister himself, which took place in the _Vatican_."

"Yes, well, my father is dead and I'm not going to take _your_ word for it. Or your sister's for that matter—she whelped with a stableboy while her husband was bedridden and has conspired to supersede the rules of Neopolitan succession. I doubt that she's let one honest word slip from her lips her whole life."

Rage coils in Cesare's chest and he begins to move before thinking, to jump over the table and rip out Raphael's throat with his own teeth or something similar, but Lucrezia stills him with a hand on his wrist. "It's done, Cesare," she says with sharp eyes on Raphael's smug face. "I'm glad for it."

In the corridor, Alfonso rises from the bench and half-heartedly reaches for Lucrezia. She twists out of his way as she glides past, snapping her skirts to the side so that they don't even brush against his boots. "I hear that we're not married, my lord, so you may not touch me with such familiarity," she tells him in her _Most Gracious, Lady Lucrezia Borgia_ voice.

Cesare grips him by the front of his doublet and wrenches him forward a step. "That was your wife," he hisses, "and you put her through that charade with your uncle for nothing. _Nothing_."

"My lord Borgia," Alfonso says, detangling himself from Cesare's hands. He carries bags underneath his eyes, and Cesare knows that he has fallen victim to the lie that all evil in this world sprang from Rodrigo Borja's seed. "Given your family's current circumstances, I fail to see what else I can do."

Cesare claps him on the shoulder and grants him a tight-lipped smile, aware of Lucrezia's presence in the periphery of his vision. "That is the excuse of a weak man. You knew who she was when you married her, who our father was. Children _do_ tend to outlive their parents, my lord." The dagger at his hip is so close, but spilling Alfonso's blood before his family is outside the gates of Naples is not a move Cesare wants to make.

Back in her room, Lucrezia bends over Giovanni's crib and runs her fingers along his cheek. "I'm fine," she murmurs when he sidles alongside her and rests his hands on her arms. "Giovanni and I will never be separated again, for I will never marry another man with such power to demand it." She speaks the words with a mixture of relief and resignation, and Cesare tightens his grip on her arms and kisses the smooth skin of her cheek.

"I'll take care of you," he promises.

"All of us," Lucrezia corrects him, and he nods, resting his forehead against her temple. She reaches up over her shoulder to run her fingers across his beard, the coarse hairs tickling her fingertips. "Our father thought that the bonds of marriage would make us safe, would make _him_ safe," she says, and turns in Cesare's arms. His hands slip to her waist, and she takes solace in their firm grip. "He was wrong. Our family is the only thing that can keep us safe. No one else can be trusted."

His sister's face is hard lines and suspicion now, and Cesare runs his thumb along the curve of her lower lip, remembering how easily she had smiled before Naples, before Paolo, before Giovanni Sforza. She purses her lips against the digit, and Cesare turns her head to the side to kiss the corner of her mouth.

"I will make us safe again," he says against her skin. "I swear it."


	3. Chapter 3

They leave Naples in a bloc.

Side-by-side, Lucrezia and Vanozza stalk the length of the castle's hall one final time, swathed in their finest dresses and jewels. Lucrezia's dressed Giovanni in white from head to toe and she carries him on her hip, where he belongs. Members of court back out of their way in derision, not deference, but the women say nothing and step gracefully into the carriage that Alfonso has provided them—his parting gift of pity to his never-wife.

Cesare is already on horseback with a face like thunder, Micheletto as well with his hand tucked into the shoulder of his doublet. Only Jofré seems sad to leave, bowing to Sancia and kissing her cheek in parting. Sancia runs her fingers over Jofré's hair to straighten the fine strands before he leaps up onto the strong horse that she has quietly provided for him. The four pack horses tied to the back of the carriage are also her silent gifts, and Lucrezia thinks that had time been on their side, Sancia and Jofré could have been a content couple, if not a happy one.

Lucrezia knows that the assembly of Raphael and his court are not to wish the King's honored guests a safe journey, but to watch the expulsion of the House of Borgia with their own eyes. She busies herself with settling Giovanni at her side and does not deign to make eye contact with any of them, least of all Alfonso.

The annulment she can understand, but he had not even pretended resistance. How could she be surprised, though? She looks down at the son that was kept from her for so long and remembers: It is Alfonso's nature to be compliant. _He has all the sweetness of an apple on the tree,_ isn't that what she had said? She should have remembered that apples eventually fall to the ground and rot.

The carriage rocks a bit as they start forward and hooves clatter sharply against the flagstones as Cesare, Micheletto, and Jofré pass the carriage to take the lead of the caravan. They pass through the archway of the city and out into the open road, and Lucrezia pushes all thoughts of Alfonso and Naples to the back of her mind.

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><p>In the warm glow of dusk, la bella Giulia Farnese floats down the front steps of her new husband's country palazzo to meet the road-ragged family. She'd accepted Lorenzo's offer of marriage the day after Rodrigo's death, when she had been summarily ejected from her apartment in the Vatican by the College. Even women like Giulia need a male protector and a place to lay their heads. He is nice enough, her husband; quiet, well-read, a middling horseman, and has not said a single word about her former patron since his death.<p>

She takes little Giovanni so that Lucrezia can safely step down, then Vanozza. "Your man is in the kitchen," she says to Cesare, as Micheletto had ridden ahead of the caravan after lunch. "Our cook has a spare pallet down there where he can stay. Your chambers are not quite ready but dinner is. Please, come in. You are all very welcome here."

Giulia's new husband is not of the highest-ranking nobility, but he has a sizeable home on a well-managed and sprawling farm north of Rome. "It's a safe distance," Giulia remarks lightly over dinner. "Though the new Pope would have liked to send me to the Alps, were it in his power."

After the servants begin to clear away the plates, Giulia finds Lucrezia and Vanozza walking along the edge of the terrace overlooking the fields below. "Where will you go?" she asks them. "You must know that you cannot stay in Italy. The Sforzas, the Orsinis…they will hunt you down if you do."

"Cesare's wife is in France with a sizeable estate," Vanozza says, shifting Giovanni to her other hip. "He has sent a letter to her—"

Giulia stops short and puts a hand on Vanozza's elbow. "You haven't heard?" Vanozza tilts her head and Giulia sighs. "I'm so sorry…The French king stripped that title from Cesare and della Rovere annulled his marriage to Charlotte d'Albret."

Lucrezia barks out an incredulous laugh. "A new pope, and all the kings wipe their slates clean to start again."

Vanozza sighs and runs her hand over Giovanni's head. "Spain, then. We shall go back to Spain."


	4. Chapter 4

The last time that Lucrezia had been alone with Cesare had been in her room in Naples, when he promised that he would keep them safe from harm. Now they are in Florence, tucked away in one of Signore Machiavelli's palaces, with plenty of room to spread out and breathe after days on the road from La Bella Farnese's estate.

Lucrezia finds Cesare in his room (a room of his own – not a room at an inn with a narrow bed shared with Jofré), leaning against the windowsill and peering out onto the streets of Florence. "Luciano," she sings out in greeting, rapping her knuckles on the casement of the door, and Cesare looks back to her after a beat.

"Filippa," he answers with a twist on his lips, and she joins him at the window. They had greeted Niccolo Machiavelli as the family Tondini; Cecilia, the matriarch, her three children, Luciano, Filippa, and Emanuele, and Filippa's baby, Giovanni. Machiavelli, to his unfailing credit, didn't bat an eyelash and ordered that the Tondinis be shown every courtesy by his staff.

"Do you miss him, sis?" Cesare asks, breaking their companionable silence. Lucrezia peers out over the roofs of the city and nods.

"Our father? In a way, yes," she replies. She worries the skin around a fingernail, where it's peeled back a bit. Cesare wraps his hand around hers to distract her, turns her palm upwards and traces the lines of it. "But I also am…relieved that he is dead. He would have let me rot away in Naples, and he thought nothing of keeping Giovanni away from me, as long as _the family_ was served by me spreading my legs." Her voice is dark and bitter. Cesare kisses her palm. "You were the only one that fought for me and Giovanni, Cesare. You and Micheletto. _You_ should have been his father," she finishes with a low voice and bright eyes.

Cesare feels a tug low in his gut and kisses her before he can think about it, catching her lower lip between his teeth. Her hands grab at his neck and chest and her breath stutters when his hand slides across the swell of her backside. She arches against him, pressing up against the powerful line of his body, and he slides his tongue into her mouth with a groan.

With a great amount of willpower and a thundering heart, she pushes away and touches her swollen lips. "The door, Cesare," she murmurs, and he looks over her shoulder to see that it's still open to the corridor beyond. He curses under his breath and turns to the window again, bracing his forearms on the sill. Her skirts whisper against the floor as she comes to stand next to him again and tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow in the image of sisterly affection. The insistent press of her fingers into the muscle is the only contraindication, and Cesare welcomes the weight of Lucrezia against him.

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><p>Vanozza's headache refuses to let her sleep, so she softly pads through Signore Machiavelli's palace to pass the night. She passes massive tapestries, shelf after shelf of hefty tomes, and she half-way wishes that she had brought a candle with her to better admire the furnishings of this luxurious Florentine manse. The light would have hurt her head, though, and she contents herself with running her fingers along the upholstered furniture, playing a game of <em>guess the textile<em> instead. Silk on a low bench, linen tablecloth in the dining room, wool for the curtains…

The respite in Florence was already doing wonders for her children. Jofré was not so used to such long hours in the saddle and was enjoying whiling away his time with Machiavelli's books in a window seat. Lucrezia and Cesare had spent the afternoon in the garden, lounging on the grass like commoners while Giovanni toddled between them. She remembers when each of them slipped from her body; to see them all grown up, Lucrezia with a child of her own, is bittersweet for Vanozza. _Rodrigo should be here_, Vanozza thinks, _with us, his family_. But Rodrigo had put forth every effort to scatter his children across the map of Europe, carving the family up like he would a roasted duck.

_Ambition_. That's what Lucrezia had said ran the House of Borgia. It had seen her married to two weak men and Jofré sent off to God-only-knows-exactly-where at such a young age. It had set Juan and Cesare against each other, sending both into their own kind of darkness, until only one was left standing. Yet for all of Rodrigo's ambition, Juan's pride, and Cesare's pragmatism, they had not been _happy_ for a long time—not since the early days of Rodrigo's papacy and Lucrezia's first wedding, when she had looked so young and beautiful and resplendent and they had all thought that a marriage each would solve all their problems.

Cesare and Lucrezia today in the garden—_that_ had been happiness, Vanozza thinks, letting the silk cord of a drape slip through her fingers. The two of them had always been extraordinarily close, and there had been a time where Vanozza had worried that had it not been for Lucrezia, Cesare would have allowed himself to go as far down into the blackness as Juan had before his death. And today, as the two joked with each other and doted on Giovanni, Vanozza had the first stirrings that perhaps her family could find happiness again at the end of this long and arduous journey.

She hears a door quietly open and shut from the balcony above, and, curious, Vanozza peers up to see Lucrezia padding along silently, the paleness of her hair and shift turning her into a waif in the darkness. Vanozza thinks for a moment that maybe Giovanni had been crying and, lost in her thoughts, she hadn't heard, but then Lucrezia stops in front of Cesare's door. She doesn't knock—just turns the knob and slips through the crack without hesitation.

_Oh._

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><p>Oopsie daisy, Lucrezia.<p>

We're starting to reach the end of what I already have written, but I would love to hear y'all's feedback! I basically am at a fork in the road of where I want to take this story (geographically as well as substantively) and I keep waffling between the two choices. :| Maybe I just need to merge them or think outside the box a bit...


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